


the holy and the fool

by captainofthegreenpeas



Category: Original Work
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Multi, Mystery, Suspense, Unfinished, Work In Progress, Working title, but not discontinued
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-07-03 12:32:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15818952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainofthegreenpeas/pseuds/captainofthegreenpeas
Summary: A little girl can hear a man howling in torment every night. For the first time, she goes looking for him.(Part of a larger story, not a short story in itself).





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cocohorse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cocohorse/gifts), [Solanaceae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solanaceae/gifts).



> Hey! Hope you guys are having a great summer. I just realised I haven't offered any more vignettes from any of my original writing projects since Christmas, so here's the opening of the story that I wrote an extract for at Christmas (the one about oranges and tomatoes? That one.) Love to hear your opinions on it, I'd love even more to have it all written up and posted so you could read it as a whole but it's very much a WIP. Might be unsuccessful, but at the same time I've been chewing it over for more than a year so I'm gonna try and see it through.

All my life, I have been looking for the Wailing Man.

He is my old friend now, though not by choice. I never chose to hear him screaming in the night, when I was bundled into my bed. Daylight silenced him, so he waited until long after the candles were bare to call to me. His voice was carried on the wind, the breath of the gods, but I never chose that either, any more than I chose the words of the Litany those same gods gave us.

I know each note of his cries, like birdsong, but I have no face to call the composer. He never introduced himself to me, but he had no need to, any more than my fingers need to introduce themselves to my hands. Just as the cockerel in the courtyard always signalled the dawn, the Wailing Man signalled the night. The one, to me, is as natural as the other.

 

Neither could ever rouse my sister. Anyone can sleep like a log, but Laura’s log is a deaf log, a drunken log, a baby log, a deaf drunken baby log. All the armies of Coretta could lay siege to her bedchamber, their cannons blasting holes through her bed curtains; and she would mind the blackened strips of fabric shrouding her no more than a fish minds a brushing strand of seaweed. The Wailing Man’s agony simply blew over her ears.  Always, she slept on beside me, sailing through her dreams on calm seas. All things considered, by the power of her snoring, those dreamy seas were not without their gusts and storms.

 

In my earliest years, she was my sleeping lion. Laura is nine years my senior, which at a tender age would make any cat look like a lion. I trusted her to hiss and scratch at the Wailing Man, if he came too close, though I consoled myself with the thought that her presence alone should ward off any malevolence. If she had no fear of any of the spit boys, she must be fearless still in the face of any… ghost?

The very earliest years of my life are one dark shadow of time stretching back to whatever night it was that I was conceived and thus it all began, as it so with everyone else. The one detail of those faint dark years that is as sure as stone, is that I heard the Wailing Man call, but I did not yet answer.

It was around the time of my sixth birthday that I finally moved from the shadow of Laura’s sleeping bulk; and first ventured to find the Wailing Man. I had come to a crossroads: I was too old to be cowed and too young to be cautious. He had never called me by name in his shrieking, but I was devoutly certain that he was calling to me. I am neither priest nor witch: whether I am bound for Heaven or for Hell is for the gods to decide. I had no powers to move the Wailing Man’s soul that any other child lacked. But it was I the Wailing Man was calling to, or why else did nobody seem to hear him but me?

Sometime after the first venture, while I was still sure in the belief that the Man was a ghost, I wondered how I should have addressed him. I had been instructed as soon as I could stand up on how to curtsey. The moment I formed my first word, it was time to learn how to address a priest, a knight, a duke, a king. As for ghosts, nobody had taken the time to fully explain the hierarchy in the other worlds. Would it be clear, in his unearthly form, what rank he was? Do sumptuary laws apply to spirits? Are their clothes even clothes, without mortal bodies attached? Would a ghost outrank me, simply by right of being dead? Would he keep his earthly title or take a new one?  Nobody had seen fit to mention it. Perhaps it had slipped their minds.

Certainly, it had slipped mine. The night that I put aside the warm armour of the blankets and left Laura snoring alone, I put aside all questions of propriety along with all fear of ghostly dread. To my eyes, grasping at the moonlight, the Wailing Man could mean me no harm. I knew very little of the world, but I had wits enough to know he was in pain. Even a cub knows when his mother has been wounded.

Agatta’s truckle bed was on Laura’s side, leaving my path to the bedroom door black but unimpeded. She was bone-weary. All nursemaids are after a long day of diligently tending to three children according to the exact instructions of an exacting mistress. She slept more softly than Laura, but just as deeply. The slip of the latch on the door caused her only to twitch; and brought me out to the gallery above the hall.

It was fortunate that the Wailing Man did not lure me towards the stairs. My mother had strict rules for stair travel. If caught climbing downstairs in the dark, without light or guardian, I would never be allowed above ground again. That would not be so terrible, if it meant I had to sleep in the hall; for the bed on display there was the first-best bed, for the admiration of all but untouched except for the rarest of guests. Yet I would have been alone in it, most likely; and Laura’s presence was worth more than a finely carved bedstead.

 

In my mind, I listened to the Wailing Man’s calls again, to try and place them on a map in my mind’s eye. He had fallen silent now, so my ears could not serve as a compass. The dark stretched out the journey through the sleeping house. I cannot have travelled very far at all yet each room became a field and each threshold, a hill.

At last my forest overwhelmed me. I could not find him. The adventure was over. I sank to the floor. Without the Wailing Man spurring me on, the journey back to bed looked endless and uncertain. There would be no clear path back until dawn; and dawn would bring discovery. Now still, the cold was sinking in. I had no bed, no blanket; and no chance of ever seeking out the Wailing Man again. If I was found night-wandering once, words would be had with Agatta and I would not be night-wandering again.

Yet the gods, while reluctant to lend a hand to their intrepid daughter, did offer a finger: a thin golden finger, pointing along the bottom of a closed door. Light.

Stretching up on my toes, I patted at the door until I found the handle. I tried it. Locked, but judging by the voices and footsteps behind it, not for long.

For one foolish, blazing moment, I thought the man who opened the door was the Wailing Man, that I had found him, that I would help him. I was wrong. My father stood on the threshold.

“Olwen.” He looked past me, quick left, quick right. “Is Agatta with you? Or Laura?”

“They’re asleep.”

“So they should be, at this time of night.”

“Bring her in,” My mother called from behind him. Father stood to one side to let me step over the threshold and into the full bubble of light, into the realisation that I had entered his study. I had never been allowed in here before, so my eyes quickly made up for lost time.  It was a smaller room than I imagined, and a table stretched its fat legs across most of it. There were letters written in strange script and maps held down with empty par pots. The windows were shuttered, white tapestry eyes watching from the shadows.  My mother was the strangest sight of all. She seemed softer in her shift, without the hide of thick skirts of black wool.

Never one to waste words, she loosed her question straight at the mark: “Why are you out of bed?”

“I was looking for the wailing man,” I told her. A look passed between my mother and my father. “He is real, he _is_. I heard him, every night, again and again. I want to see him. We have to rescue him.”

Mother walked around the table and knelt so that her round face was level with mine.

“What have you dreamed?” She cupped my face with her hands to make a study of it.

She had hard hands, poked by the needle, chipped by the penknife, dyed with ink, but I sometimes saw my father touch them as if they were soft and made of silk. “Dreams are a message from the gods.”

“Cheese at dinner makes them talkative.”

 My mother had a stare that could freeze a madman’s frenzy, but it had no power over my father. Perhaps that was how he won her.

“I have not dreamed anything,” I insisted, with more haste than respect. “He is as real as me.”

“There is no wailing man.” Mother stood, as tall as her height would allow. “You will never find him, so you will gain nothing by looking. I do not want you wandering in here again.”

Mother had passed judgement: there could be no appeal. I let Father lead me from the room.

“You should go back to sleep,” he told her as we crossed the threshold. “It can wait until the morning.”

“Will you help the Wailing Man?” I asked Father as we walked. “Agatta says you’re very important.”

“If his petition is sound, he may add it to the pile. Such a pity, that night terrors have little respect for paperwork.”

I was without a reply to that, being without any understanding of what he meant. Shortly, I was back where I started and he nudged back the covers to close the book on my first attempt.

“We have to help him,” I repeated, still not quite ready to yield.

“All you need to do is close your eyes.” Father said no more. I realised he was waiting for me to do so. I thought if I kept them open, he might stay with me longer, but that might also displease him. I waited a few moments; and then decided I had lost. Father left me to sleep, stumbling over Agatta’s truckle bed on the way out, teaching me some strange new words in the process. The door closed behind him and the night was silent again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Excuse the long tangents, I'm not sure how well they do what I want them to do, but Olwen is scatterbrained and she cares a lot about little things. Also some of this will be quite familiar.

Morning saw me alone in the schoolroom, like a prisoner wondering if his sentence has been commuted. Rain fell lazily against the window beside me. Theophilus would have had a riding lesson, but Father cancelled it. My brother sulked in silence, or at least quietly enough that I couldn’t hear his bad temper over Laura playing her lute in the antechamber.

I was in the middle of learning a verse to Roan and Bramwell on my hornbook, a text simple enough to keep me safe from minor blasphemy. The door opened, but my attention was on things higher than footsteps that I assumed belonged to Theophilus. It was not until I heard my name that I realised I had heard the footsteps but not listened to them. They had been too light and slow to belong to either of my siblings. My hornbook slipped out of my hand, but I bowed my head and curtseyed before picking it up.

“No need for such formalities, daughter,” Father said, formally. “But that was well executed.”

The compliment seemed a good sign, but I was unsure nonetheless. I did not know how to address him, now that the intimacy born of urgency had dissipated. Mother instructed Agatta, Agatta took care of us, we talked to Agatta, Agatta reported to Mother. Father did not break this smooth cycle. I knew him as the hand on Mother’s shoulder, the whisper in her ear, the mouth pressed on hers. He was the sombre and withdrawn spectre who sometimes sat at supper with us, as far and high as a judge, speaking more with his eyes than with his voice. Panelled walls and heavy doors separated our days when he was home, and we did not always know when he was. At the start of the week, he would walk down the river stairs to take a boat across the Frideswide; and I would watch him from the schoolroom. One winter when I was very small, he gave me an orange, but it was Agatta who showed me how to eat it.

I must now diverge from my purpose to relate something of the nature and form of oranges, for I do not know whether my countrymen will read this with ignorance and if so, I would not have them hear of the new foods with superstition. It was upon the eve of the same Feast of Mirjam that I tasted an orange that our table bore that fruit called the tomato and that thing called the potato. Such luxuries were not according to my mother’s creed and custom, but were made necessities by time. With sickness and hunger, the mouths of my father and the poor of the parish had alike swallowed my mother’s hours.

There were no scraps of time for her to make marchpane; and of course she would admit nobody else to the still room except Mamgie, and then to clean. With the month waning and no especial sweet for the feast made ready, my mother yielded and purchased an orange each for all of us, alongside a tomato plant and a small sack of potatoes. That is how we came by oranges.

The orange itself is rounder than an apple, still firm, but with a slight sponginess that an apple does not have. It has a colour like the yellow mustard seed before it is crushed, but brighter and sharper on the eye. Laura called it golden, but that is not quite so, it has a plusher, more reddish hue. The skin of the potato is like the skin of an apple, but the skin of the orange is dappled and thick and it is dusty white on its inside. This skin must be removed, for it is bitter and tough and can no more be chewed and eaten than leather. Under the skin, the flesh of the orange bears the same rich colour as its outer skin but it is threaded like raw meat, though it needs no cooking to eat. The orange can be cut quite easily into crescents that hold a sweetness like nothing else, far more potent than honey or mint. I have forgotten much of that day, but no witch could make me forget that first bite and the moment the flesh burst its juice on my tongue.

The tomato I ate by accident and now that I have I think it wrong to use it only for decoration and, after the feast, pig feed. It is a perfectly good thing to eat and what is more there is no need to remove the skin, which bursts with a bite and is both thin and soft, like the skin of a chicken leg. Its flesh is like a thin jelly, or to those who have not eaten jelly I should call it honey, but it is not as thick. The flavour is very mild, but a good feast should have many diverse flavours, which cannot be done if every morsel of food must overpower the senses. If we eat only rich food, our mouths will be deafened. The tomato may not be as rich a treasure as an orange, but we do not hate and cast off our pearls because they are not rubies.

I may be a lawyer for the defence of the tomato, but I consider the potato to be dreadfully guilty. Before it is cooked, the potato is sour and bitter, dun and dirty. Cooking makes it little better, for it breaks apart in the mouth and sits on the tongue like ash or flour. It has even less flavour than the tomato, but at least the tomato can be praised for its red colour, its round shape and the smoothness of its skin. The potato is shaped like a canker and it feels like one. I do not understand how the peoples of the many lands beyond the seas, no matter how simple or heathen they may be, looked at a potato and then thought it good to eat. I am no more able to fathom how a captain, whose holds are not unfathomable, can command for potatoes to be taken aboard and then risk cannon fire and shipwreck to carry such mush across the ocean. Such captains must have had their brains turned to tomato-flesh by the sun. No doubt after long months at sea, anything that does not house worms must look nourishing, no matter how misshapen. There is nothing in the potato that the humble turnip or parsnip cannot provide at a fraction of the expense, so I must hope that the potato will be duly forgotten and no more knots endured in its pursuit.

I must now stop writing on that subject; I have already drained most of my inkwell and I do not have the time today to make more. (I will not cross out what I have already written, for it was the plain truth and furthermore it would bleed more ink to cross it out). No judge can hold open his ears to a prattling woman for long; and I am not writing to bear witness against the folly of captains. My pen must be blunted by heavier words. My Father, giver of oranges, broke the silence that I have just returned to discuss.

“Last night’s wandering prompted a thought. Laura is the oldest, Theophilus the son, it would be quite easy for you to be…overlooked. That will not do.” He pointed to the chess set. “Agatta said she saw you trying to play. Now you will learn to properly.”

That was not quite true. I had been playing with the pieces, but not with the intention of a game. I had been making a story with them: the black queen was abducted by the red knight and the black king nearly died of sorrow. The black knight tried to rescue the queen from the red castles but failed and was cursed by the evil red preacher (who was evil, therefore he must also be a sorcerer) to be lost in darkness for a thousand thousand years. A lowly red pawn, taking pity on the noble queen for never once yielding her virtue, tricked the red knight with a magic potion (in the real world, we call that poison, but poisoning is dishonourable for a hero, regardless of his caste) and brought her safely home. The black preacher then performed a double marriage: the black queen to her king; and the red pawn to a beautiful black pawn that lost her heart to him for his bravery. The marriage of the red and black pawn broke the red preacher’s spell and the black knight was no longer cursed. (A story sewn together from scraps of other tales, as any reader well-versed in verse will have noticed.)

I did not see why Father would have the slightest interest in just what I had been playing, so I did not contradict him. Besides, it was my secret tale, for my enjoyment alone. I reflected his curious stare instead. As I said, I had seen him before, of course, but this was the first time that I could stare without being told that it was rude. Laura was my mother writ bigger, but Agatta said once, offhand, that I resembled Father the most. I looked for myself in him. Black hair and olive skin came from both parents, but I realised I did indeed have him to thank for my long nose and weak chin. Father’s face had creases in it that mine did not; and his cheeks were poked with holes, like a statue with woodworm, but we shared a dimple. One eye was black and sharp and mirror-clear, the other eye was round and white as liquid chalk. A riding accident before we were born had punched out his front teeth, which made his rare smiles snakelike.

The same feast that he gave me the orange, I dared to hang off his arm, which caused him to yelp. The cry of pain surprised me, but I thought the gift made us close enough to ask him why his arms were so spindly. Mother rebuked me sharply, but Father showed me how a shoulder sits in its socket like my toy ball-in-a-cup. The same accident, so he explained, that had claimed his front teeth and his brother, pulled his shoulders apart. He then used a chicken wing to show me how a physician had levered them back in.

“Set up the board, child,” he told me, still staring.

I did as I was bid, putting board and box on the low table by the hearth and placing each piece on his square. Father sat perfectly still, moving only to silently swap the king and queen’s spaces. After I recited the names of each piece, he recited each rule and I repeated it. With this introduction, the game began; and I despaired. Every piece of his I claimed was repaid with another piece being lost. My moves were slow and confused, his replies swift and sure. By the end of the game, tears were brewing. Father could not be impressed, surely, by such a dismal performance. I looked up to see him surprised at my misery.

“Everyone loses their first game. Theophilus lost in three moves and sulked until the seasons changed. Practice with him, and by the by do not feel under any obligation to let him win because he’s your brother. Defeat him soundly. He’ll have far greater adversaries to face than you.”

“At university?” Universities seemed fearful things.

“Perhaps. Your mother insists he will go, but it might not suit him. Perhaps he will be a priest, or learn the law, as I did. Perhaps he will be a soldier. Whatever he chooses, he’ll find enemies.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know finishing this chapter here makes it look like Theophilus is going to be the focus of the story, but he isn't actually that important a character (at least in my notes so far).  
> We're only about halfway through this scene I'm just not doing terribly well with the dialogue so this is a fragment of a fragment. But it's a big fragment, which is why I'll be continuing this scene next chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> Anticlimactic, I know. But I wanted some of it to be read, even if as a fragment.


End file.
